Judge sentences Tampa man to life in prison for 2003 rape

TAMPA — Mannot Lusca, who raped a 20-year-old woman in her home in 2003 at gunpoint, eluded police for eight years, but a jury needed only an hour Thursday to convict him. He was immediately sentenced to life in prison.

Lusca now awaits trials on four other rape charges. Those involve teenage girls dragged off the street in the University Area from 2002 to 2004.

The 2003 rape case had been declared inactive, but Hillsborough Sheriff's Detective Charles Boswell picked it up again in 2010 and tracked Lusca to a federal penitentiary in California where he was finishing a cocaine sentence.

Lusca confessed and his DNA matched semen found at the rape scene.

On Thursday, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Chet Tharpe sentenced Lusca to three consecutive life sentences for two counts of sexual battery with a weapon and one count of burglary with assault or battery.